


The Thing About Friendship

by kontraklarinette



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27392149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kontraklarinette/pseuds/kontraklarinette
Summary: Luz had always felt like she was missing something.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	The Thing About Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> i can’t believe i’ve never written a luz centric fic before!!! about time!!!!!!!!!

Luz Noceda was a wonderful writer.

At least, that’s what people had always told her, so she guessed it must be true. Once people repeat the same thing enough times it seems almost right. 

It had all started in second grade, when she’d entered a schoolwide short story contest with a piece about a misunderstood little cat who didn’t have any friends. She won first place (“by a landslide,” according to her mom, whose coworker was apparently one of the judges) and she kept her cheap plastic trophy on top of her bookshelf for five more years before it disappeared under mysterious circumstances. But after that, Luz never stopped writing.

She did excellently in English class throughout all of middle school and was regarded by each of her teachers as a bright and promising student who “is a little bit restless in class, and she doesn’t always remember to turn in her assignments, but when she does, they’re very creative and unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.” In sixth grade she’d written a thirty-page summary of The Good Witch Azura and come to school on the day of her presentation in a full Azura cosplay, complete with a full-length staff. It was certainly unlike anything her teachers had ever seen before. 

In seventh grade she was introduced to the wide world of fandom and quickly cemented a name for herself within the Hecazura (the superior GWA ship, obviously) corner of the internet. People loved her stories; they praised her for her original plotlines and faithful renditions of the characters. When she told her readers that she was only twelve, they all thought that she was lying.

But that didn’t stop her. 

Her talent and creativity were what kept her going throughout the end of her freshman year. Writing gave her an escape from the pressures of being a high school student, and best of all, it gave her something to love about herself.

But although she had such a wonderful refuge that provided her with so much happiness, there was still something… missing within her. 

It was like a hole in her heart, a wound that got bigger and more painful the more she strained it. She couldn’t ignore it, but she couldn’t reach inside her chest and slap a band-aid on it, so the ache just kept on growing and growing until at the age of fourteen-and-three-quarters she felt about ready to double over from the fiery agony. 

She felt it first when she was ten. It was only a twinge at first. A stab here, a pang there- nothing she couldn’t deal with. Sure, maybe seeing other kids play together during recess made her feel a bit empty. But her lone swing at the corner of the blacktop was comfy… right?

And just because she ate lunch alone didn’t make her a loser. Plenty of kids ate lunch alone… wait, never mind. She was the only one in all of fifth grade lunch with a table to herself. Well, that was embarrassing. So she opted for the last bathroom stall to eat her chicken nuggets in instead. Unfortunately, that only lasted for a couple months, until a janitor found her and made her go back to the cafeteria. There she ignored the peculiar glances from her classmates for the rest of the year.

By the time she entered middle school, she realized exactly what she was missing. It was friendship.

She tried to ignore it at first. Surely friends weren’t actually all that important. Sure, maybe everyone had them, but… it’s not like they greatly improved the quality of life or anything. It’s not like she’d felt jealous when she heard the gaggle of girls in her first period math class one year talking about the wonderful weekend they’d had together and all the fun friendship activities they’d done. Not at all. 

Absolutely no pain there.

No dull, throbbing, tear-jerking aches whatsoever.

It’s not like she never tried to make friends. Luz was actually one of the most extroverted kids in the whole school, which seemed weird to everyone else, because she was also the loneliest. She was very good at talking to people and she did it at every available chance that she got. Unfortunately people usually just weren’t interested in what she had to say. Which was super weird, right? Who wouldn’t want to hear about the twists and turns in the newest Azura book, or how griffons definitely actually had spider breath, and that there was scientific evidence to back it up? That stuff was all super cool! If someone had talked to Luz about it, she would have gladly listened.

But eventually she came to the realization that her attempts would forever remain unfruitful. So she gave up, and started waiting for people to come to her.

Once her classmates realized that she’d let her guard down… come to her they did. 

She was sitting in 7th-grade science class one frosty February morning, waiting for the beginning of class bell to ring when she was approached by a boy she didn’t know. She guessed he was popular solely from the fact that he was wearing a football jersey, and how he strolled toward her with a cocky, confident gait, and how three of his buffoons stood behind him, watching his every move. There was a mischievous glint in his eye. She didn’t take any notice of it at first.

“Hi,” she said when he stopped in front of her desk. 

“What’s up?” She was a little confused by his presence, but anyone who approached her was a potential friend, and wow did she want one of those!

The boy snickered. “Luz…” 

Luz leaned in toward him.

“Will you go out with me?” As soon as he posed the question, the boy broke into raucous laughter. Luz frowned. Why was he laughing? And why was he asking her, of all people?

“Well?” he asked.

“Um…” Luz shifted in her seat uncomfortably. She’d never been asked out before- she hadn’t even gone on a date, unlike most of her classmates. In all her twelve years of being alive, she’d never even hung out with a friend. But hey, what did she have to lose? “Sure?”

The boy sniggered again, and he gestured to his friends. “Gotcha!” they all exclaimed. They looked like they might all fall over, they were laughing so hard.

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s a joke.” The lead boy pointed an accusing finger at Luz. “I can’t believe you think I’m legit. Do you really think anyone would ever want to go out with you?” He spun around and walked back to his desk, high-fiving one of his buddies along the way.

Luz felt her bottom lip begin to tremble. She tried to suppress the tears that were forming behind her eyes, but she did to no avail. What a mean-spirited joke! Why would anybody find that funny?  
Did he really think that nobody would ever want to go out with her?

She supposed it made sense. After all, nobody even wanted to be her friend. For six years now she’d been fending for herself in the unforgiving ecosystem of public school. What was one more year? Or a year after that? Or after that, or after that, for every year until she graduated, and even then, why wouldn’t she still feel like a fish out of water? For some reason unbeknownst to her, nobody wanted to be around her.

And so the hole in her heart continued to grow. 

At the beginning of eighth grade, Luz’s English teacher assigned a project on the first day of school that excited her with all its creative possibilities. The assignment was for each student to find a song that they related to and share with the class as a sort of “getting-to-know-everyone” activity. It seemed simple, but to Luz, there was no such thing as a simple project. She could write stories- so why not songs? Why not make a wonderful first impression for her final year of middle school and maybe- just maybe- garner some semblance of a social circle before she was thrust into her freshman year?

Just because she’d never sung before didn’t mean she couldn’t be wonderful. Maybe she sang as well as she wrote.

She spent days carefully crafting the lyrics to her song. It would be a poignant tale of loneliness and misunderstanding, and when she struck the high note at the end, her classmates would cheer and boom, she’d have won herself some cool new friends. Her plan was absolutely foolproof… until she went to school that day and her nerves clammed her up so quickly she forgot the entire second verse.

Needless to say, her performance ended with laughter from the audience.

She sat at the empty table in the north corner of the cafeteria that year instead of the west. (A little change of scenery never hurt anyone.)

A week before her freshman year ended, she was crouched over the desk in her room, sewing the last of her anatomically-correct griffon together. 

Soft music from her phone played in the background as she worked. Distracted from the project and losing herself in the soft piano ballad, she let her mind wander.

She’d been the only one who hadn’t managed to get a partner for this project.   
Was there something wrong with her?

Clearly there was, or she wouldn’t be the only one in school who could go days without talking to anyone. 

What had she done wrong?

Why didn’t she deserve to have the one thing that every single person she knew had seemed to acquire with ease?

Would she always be unlovable?

Unable to take the assault to her brain any longer, she laid her head on her desk and opened up the floodgates, letting herself sob until there were no more tears left to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> and people wonder why i’m a luz kinnie
> 
> jk jk this has just been floating around in my mind for a while and i needed to get it out, luz’s relationship with willow and gus is so cute but nobody ever talks about how luz never had any friends before she came to the isles and i think we as a fandom should talk about that more


End file.
